The invention relates to electronic information searching techniques. More particularly, the invention relates to a technique for providing improved search results for search requests related to electronically stored information.
Huge quantities of information are available via the World Wide Web. For example, electronic commerce Web sites can offer for sale hundreds of products. Educational Web sites can offer access to the equivalent of thousands of printed volumes of information. To use these huge quantities of information, many Web sites provide search engines.
Typical search engines provide a user the ability to perform basic Boolean searches. For example, a user can type a string for which to search (a xe2x80x9csearch stringxe2x80x9d) and/or search terms connected by logical AND and/or logical OR operators. Searching for a string yields no results, or xe2x80x9chits,xe2x80x9d if the string does not match exactly.. Use of an AND operator provides more accurate hits, but may miss the desired item if the wrong term is entered. Use of an OR operator provides a greater number of hits, but may result in an overwhelming number of hits.
For example, on a health/pharmacy electronic commerce Web site, a potential customer may search for xe2x80x9cAcme Mint Mouthwash,xe2x80x9d which the user believes to be available. However, this search string does not accurately describe a product because Acme does not manufacture a mint mouthwash. In this example, the string search and an AND search (e.g., Acme AND Mint AND Mouthwash) would yield the same results, i.e., zero hits. If the electronic commerce Web site indicates zero hits, even though Acme may make many other types of mouthwash and other manufacturers provide several mint mouthwashes, potential sales can be lost.
To compensate for the zero hits resulting from the AND search, the electronic commerce Web site can provide or perform an OR search. If the search performed is an OR search, (e.g., Acme OR Mint OR Mouthwash), a large number of hits may result. The number of hits can be so large as to overwhelm the potential customer, which can result in the loss of potential sales. What is needed is an improved search engine.
A method of electronically searching for information is described. The method involves a user using multiple search terms to perform a search. Different forms of the selected search terms are then used to perform the search, and a hit vector is generated for each response to the search request. Finally, the search results are sent to the user, with the hit vectors forming the basis, in part, for generating the results.